Fracture mechanics properties of human cranial bone

Abstract

The mechanical properties of the human skull have been examined and established previously in the literature, for example, the transversal isotropy of cranial bone and properties including the Elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio. However, despite the existing data, there are still mechanical properties which remain to be determined for the human skull. The present study aims to characterise the fracture properties of human cranial bone within the Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM) framework. Unembalmed human (2 female and 3 male) cortical cranial bone samples were harvested from the frontal, and left and right parietal bones and were tested in Mode I (N = 124), Mode II (N = 31) and Mixed-Mode I-II (N = 47) loading conditions. For Mode I, samples were tested using Single Edge Notched Beams (SENB) under symmetric 3-point bending, while for Mixed-Mode I-II samples were tested under asymmetric 3-point bending. For Mode II, 4-point bend tests were carried out. All samples fractured in a brittle fashion. From these tests, reference values of stress intensity factor (K_I and K_II) and the strain energy release rate (J_I, G_I, G_II, G_I-II) for the frontal, left and right parietal bones were calculated. It was determined that the fracture toughness of the frontal, and left and right parietal bones are not statistically different from each other and that they exhibit symmetry about the sagittal plane. It was also demonstrated that, as is the case for other human bones and for the age range tested here, the fracture toughness of human cranial bone is lower for females (K_I female 2.48 (±2.16) MPa∗m^0.5, K_I male 4.75 (±2.58) MPa∗m^0.5, G_I female 1.07 (±3.01) kJ/m², G_I male 1.85 (±1.93) kJ/m², J_I female 1.57 (1.89) kJ/m² and J_I male 4.03 (±3.32) kJ/m²) and varies with age. More experimental work should be carried out to confirm the extrapolation of these conclusions to the other fracture modes tested here.

Although these results are influenced by the age range and the age gap within the group of donors, the primary data presented here is valuable to those wishing to predict crack evolution and propagation in the human cranial bone and may prove useful in developing failure criterion or simulations of skull fracture using Finite Element Analysis.